The Schwartz Report

Microsoft Taps Silicon Valley for Build

Microsoft will court Silicon Valley developers when it holds its Build developer conference June 26-28 in San Francisco, where the company is expected to preview the future of the Windows platform and the apps that will run on it.

Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft's corporate VP and chief evangelist for Microsoft's developer and platform group made the announcement at the Visual Studio Live! Conference in Las Vegas last week. (Disclosure: Like Redmond magazine, Visual Studio Live! is produced by parent company 1105 Media). Guggenheimer subsequently posted details on the planned conference in a blog post. Registration opens tomorrow.

Former Redmond magazine editor Keith Ward, who is now editor in chief of Visual Studio Magazine, caught up with Guggenheimer at Visual Studio Live! after the announcement and tried to get some details about what Microsoft will reveal at the upcoming conference.

In the interview, posted on the Visual Studio MagazineWeb site, Guggenheim (not surprisingly) kept details close to the vest. "It's a little early to get into the details," Guggenheim told Ward. "The key is we'll provide updates across the range of our platforms, and depending on where we are with different pieces we'll give updates. It will be the Windows family of products, Visual Studio, many different things."

As All about Microsoft and Redmond columnist Mary Jo Foley noted in her post, the Build conference will overlap with TechEd Europe, due to take place in Madrid. The implications of that remain to be seen.

Certainly watchers are anticipating Microsoft will have more to say about the next wave of Windows updates, code-named Blue, which have indicated support for new form factors, among other things. As reported by Foley and Redmond's Kurt Mackie, Microsoft's chief spokesman Frank X. Shaw confirmed Blue, albeit with few details.

Not only is it good to hear that Build is in the not-to-distant future but the fact that Microsoft chose San Francisco as the venue for the conference was a wise move -- the company needs to have Silicon Valley in the fold.